That darn intellectual elite

Although I no longer think that I'm very bright, I grew up in a family that used big words. I probably read above my grade level, although I lacked the experience and maturity really to understand all of the sentences and paragraphs made of words that I could read and technically define. When I would ask my parents, "what does [word] mean?" they would answer, "Look it up in the dictionary." Or sometimes they would say, "Go wash your mouth out with soap." I was curious about all words.

Kids on the playground would ask, in unkind tones, "did you swallow a dictionary?" No, but it was my bathroom reading.

The working class used to be proud of its own intellectuals, many of whom leaned left. Indeed, the left was traditionally based on workers' rights, and improving living standards for the people who push the wheels of the economy around. Corruption in the leadership of unions and of technically socialist states was neatly spun by the real elitists to condemn the whole movement. The greed of individuals is the root of all evil. Maybe someone does deserve a slightly bigger piece of the cake that the whole community cooperated to make, but if the division seems wildly disproportionate, look for underlying causes before you simply decide either that the system must be right or that it is entirely wrong. You don't crush your car because a dirty air filter is making it run inefficiently.

The internet has made it possible to pump both straight information and egregious propaganda directly into the brains of isolated individuals who are looking for answers. We still have plenty of broadcast media as well, and some print, but lots and lots of people get their information from someone who sees something and tells someone else, or from items of variable reliability posted and reposted on what we have come to call social media. Old media used to fear getting caught making a mistake or presenting an outright fraud. Accuracy and impartiality mattered. An outlet might have a known editorial position, reflected in clearly labeled editorials, but the news was the news. If facts and events seemed to have a liberal bias, it was the fault of reality. For a brief, beautiful time, most people really did seem to be happier imagining that we should all be nicer to each other.

I think that the trend toward more consistently biased communication stems from the instinctive desperation our species is feeling because we have not yet done much about problems that we should have started addressing 45 or 50 years ago. We're speeding toward the wall that we could have avoided with a gentle tug at the wheel in the 1970s, and now we have to make a sharp swerve that could still send us careening into it in a twisted pile of wreckage. Even the deniers know this. Maybe some of them think that they have perfected some sort of ejector seat that will catapult them clear of the smash, and others believe that some divine intervention will yank them out before it happens. It doesn't matter. Our collective refusal to look very far ahead kept us speeding forward while looking only for the next gas station, restaurant, or place of entertainment.

We have a choice between learning as a species to accommodate each other's differences as much as possible or battling to the death to create a homogeneous monoculture. Part of accommodating differences is a tacit agreement to make those differences amenable to accommodation. If your critical difference is that you insist that no one be different, you're part of the monoculture war. Thanks for nothing.

Competition is unavoidable. Say, for instance, that you follow a certain religion and you cater only to followers of that religion. Say that religion enjoys fairly high popularity for a time, giving you and your fellow believers economic leverage, because you have catered to each other and excluded unbelievers. Other players in the global economy will have to do something to ensure their own survival. Do they buy into the dominant religion, creating the monoculture through economic submission? Do they band together in opposition, in an alliance that may be strained by its own internal differences? Despite the best of intentions, individual differences add up to trends. Trends add up to evolutionary factors that shape the entire future of a species.

The Origin of the Therapist God

(Reposted from 2006)

Imagine primitive humanity. Every day brought new levels of self awareness, more questions. Emotions needed names. Mood swings could be noted and charted. Feelings started to stimulate thoughts that affected the feelings.

Depression in animals seems to be a passing thing, for the most part. But humans, able to extrapolate so many possible outcomes from a single point in time, keep coming around to depressing concepts. It has shaped our course from the beginning of self awareness.

A self-aware creature knows its beginning and its end from almost any point in its existence. Not many know the full specific details, but endpoints are in view.

Very early, people must have learned that if they shared something that hurt them with someone who cared about them, the caring friend or family member often suffered mental anguish at least equal to that of the original sufferer. So someone who cares about his loved ones would try to avoid telling them about unpleasant things unless they needed to know.

Depressed subjects would soon learn that people who did not care about them didn't want to hear their blubbering.

"Get out of here, you're bringing me down," may have been one of the first phrases of organized language after "Look out!" and "Oh, gross, was that you?"

The depressed person might find a quiet place and begin to talk to no one. Before too long, he might discover that this helped a little.

While all this simple interpersonal stuff was going on, larger issues like creation, natural disasters and unequal distribution of wealth had given rise to gods. Since gods could be benevolent as well as wrathful, someone trying to keep his problems from becoming other people's problems could quickly decide his soliloquies were prayers to the God or gods. Feeling relieved after a session, the sufferer might return to the group and tell them in general, avoiding the depressing details of his own plight, how "prayer" had helped him. Like a new diet or popular psychology book, it would quickly become the rage. People would even gather in groups to do it, just as some of them had probably discovered that misery loves company and had gathered to weep over their woes already.

Telling a deity made it easier to say and to hear. The congregation could nod sympathetically and still walk out after the service feeling no more obligation to help than was convenient.